5 reasons customers are deleting your emails

You know those promotional emails you get that you delete without a moment’s thought?

Well, a moment’s thought might just stop you making the same mistakes in your own email broadcasts.

What does your customer really think when you get in touch?

Here’s 5 reasons why your customers might be deleting your emails

One: You signed them up without explicit consent

I received an email today from a newsletter I’d never signed up to. I once attended a networking event with the sender over a year ago so wasn’t too pleased I’d been signed up without me knowing.

To avoid this with your business, make sure you use a professional email service like Aweber or Constant Contact and even have your settings to “double opt-in.”

A double opt-in means that if you add someone’s email address, they receive an automatic email making sure they want to be signed up to the newsletter. This added filter makes sure that your crowd is definitely keen to get your content so you’re not going to get complaints about unsolicited mailings.

Two: Your forget what your email is competing with

The subject line on the email I received included the words: “marketing”, “Internet” and “best” and the exclamation at the end made the subject line seem a little hyped, rather than having an editorial value to it.

When you write your email headline, you want it to look like the kind of email your audience WANTS to read. Remember, it’s competing against subject headlines from people they know or companies they are interested in . Let’s take my inbox for example. In my primary inbox we have:

Web Copy and Sales Material

Touching base

eBook content request

Make sure you’ve got your thermals this Friday for camping

Now, because those are from people I know – they are highly specific and interesting to me, but let’s also compare it to other newsletter emails I’ve signed up to and we’ve got:

Amy, your special report on social media is attached

How to get out, get organized and get noticed

Would an extra paycheck be helpful?

Can I share something personal with you?

To try and get me to open their email they are using:

Something specific I have asked for

Specific benefits I might be interested in

A question alluding to a specific benefit

Intrigue and curiosity

Could you use something similar to get your emails opened?

Three: If you are promoting something, you tell your reader why you care, not why you she should care

After a brief courtesy asking me how I was, the email then launches into the amazing successes of the business owner, how this person had launched a number of fantastic and successful projects and because everything was brilliant, she wanted to tell me about how great it was all going.

Want to find out who the emphasis is on in your email? Count how many times you are using “I,” “my” “mine” as opposed to “you,” “yours,” “you’re” etc

In this particular email the emphasis was 16 times to the business owner and 7 times to the customer.

Four: If you are selling something new, you do not explain it simply and directly.

After reading the email and visiting the new product’s site, it’s not really clear what it does, although it has something to do with being a new “marketing platform” and also included words such as “powerful seo”, “rapid results”, “effective presence” but nothing specific that could be pinned down and explained simply to my mum for example.

If you want to test the understandability of your explanation, find someone who knows the least about your business and see if it makes sense.

If I had to write instructions on setting a DVD player to record and could explain it to my dad, I know I’d done well (and if I could keep him from storming off and cursing I’d be performing a damn miracle.)

Five: You assume people know who you are and what you do

After much research, from what I can gather, this person IS good at what she does, and there are many favourable testimonials around the web about her other services.

Unfortunately, most people don’t make this much effort to convince themselves to trust you if you haven’t already captured their attention in the first few seconds. We’re bombarded with promotional messages every day that it’s much easier to delete then it is to look for reasons to clutter your inbox.

Get to the point quickly. When you’re sending emails, you want to let your reader know:

What you have

Why they should care

Who you are and why that matters to them

What they can do next to enjoy the benefits of your offer

So, next time you get a promotional email that you instinctively want to delete straight away, don’t. Stop, think about what turns you off it, and ask yourself what you can avoid when you’re emailing your own audience.

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About Amy Harrison

I am a copywriter, content-trainer, speaker and filmmaker teaching businesses how to avoid drab business content and write copy customers love to read. You can also find me hanging out and sharing content over on Google+.

Comments

A professional email service should allow you to “unsubscribe” from any promotional emails so that you don’t receive them from the same sender again. It’s worth scrolling down to look for the unsubscribe option before you delete the email.

Great post! One question though; how does a professional e-mail service helps in preventing unsolicited e-mails? In the case of promotional e-mails, I frequently receive unsolicited offers and “special deals” from companies using such services. Obviously, they go directly to the trash bin but after a while it is annoying.

These tips are important whether it’s an occasional email or a full newsletter. 🙂

I have newsletters I’ve signed up for that looked interesting on the website, then ended up as unread trash cluttering up my inbox because I didn’t want to keep reading after the first or second one. The newsletters I *do* read tend to be full of information valuable to me – which then prompt me to check out their website again out of interest.